


When I was Sixteen

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Category: Palo Alto (2013)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Car Accidents, Drugs, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 00:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4982713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I was sixteen...</p><p>Halloween Party. </p><p>Car Crash. </p><p>Run Away.</p><p>Long Haired Boys.</p><p>Working Man. </p><p>Pary Crowed. </p><p>Seventeen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I was Sixteen

**Author's Note:**

> A new style, written to eliminate James Franco's style, but with my own style thrown in.

Halloween. 

I was sixteen when I went to my first real, blow-out Halloween party. It was wild; There were kids everywhere. Most of them I knew by their faces, but I would say that a good percentage of the kids were from other schools. A few of them were even from out of state. 

I was the only sixteen year old at the predominately senior party. Some of the kids were from Stanford, and I think I even spotted a professor in a corner chatting up some blond who didn’t look that much older than I was. 

There were no costumes, really. There was a lot of makeup, and a lot of very short skirts and a few capes and fake fangs. It wasn’t what Halloween had been in years prior; Carefully constructed craft paper wings, sheet ghosts, and bumble bee striped torsos. 

I was the only one in full costume; Fangs, Makeup, Teeth, accent, wig...I went as a vampire, but the only other vampires I saw around would have surely died in the sun due to the lack of skin coverage. I almost pointed it out a few times when female ‘vampires’ came and flirted in foux transylvanian accents with me. I was one of the only male vampires, I noted. Maybe that explained why I suddenly and unwittingly seemed so attractive to the opposite sex. Needless to say, I didn’t know what to do. I would reply, poker faces, back away...find someplace else to be only to run into another one of the girls somewhere else in the sprawling and turning party. 

I’d lost more than just my vampire teeth by the end of the night. 

I crashed my car for the first time when I was sixteen. 

It was after the Halloween party, and I had had something to drink; Not a lot, but then again, I’m a light weight. I hardly ever drink, which means that it was crazy easy for Fred to get my hammered out of my mind. I threw up in the back yard in front of April...She laughed. I tried to laugh with her, but I choked. 

I crashed into a wall. It wasn’t cool like in the movies, and it didn’t hurt as much as they say it will when they’re warning you not to crash into things in Driver’s Ed. It was quick, and then I woke up in a white room with all the beeping sounds that hospitals seem to always facilitate. 

My dad was sitting beside my bed, but he looked all blurry. My head was pounding…I thought I might vomit again, so I turned away from him. He could never deal with bodily fluids; When I was thirteen I got food poisoning when I was living with him and I had to stick it alone for over a week. He tries I geuss…

“You crashed, Teddy,” he told me, his voice low and quiet as if he were trying to keep me calm. “You were knocked out, and you’re blond alcohol levels were way higher than legal levels. What were you thinking?” He sounded almost angry as he said it, though not quite. I still didn’t look at him. I wondered why I hurt so bad. 

“Teddy?” He said again, and he sounded more agitated now. “Teddy, are you hearing me?” I turned carefully towards him, even the small movement caused me to dry heave and I clawed at the sheets underneath me; It was painful. I felt my dad put his hand on my shoulder, holding me steady, and I heard myself begin to cry...he never touched me like that. 

“Teddy, what’s going on with you?” He asked. 

I never told. 

I was sixteen when I ran away. 

I wanted to see my mom again. She wasn’t like my dad; My dad was withdrawn and quiet and didn’t like kids in the first place, though I think he liked me. I felt bad about leaving him alone, but I was more angry at him than anything else. He was trying to cut me from the word.

I never did get to mom, though. The police picked me up on the side of the road half way to Arizona. They asked me what I was thinking, what was wrong with me...after that I was assigned a counselor. Her name was Janice and she scared me a little. 

She told me I was bipolar. I told her she was a jackass. 

After that I had a different shrink. Her name was Honey; I am not even kidding. I didn’t like her either, but at least she kept her diagnosis of me between herself and my dad. I didn’t want to hear it. She told me I was in denial, but I ignored her. I guess I was just proving her point. I didn’t think about it then. 

I took pills, but sometimes I would give them to Fred instead. He seemed to need them more than I did, but he didn’t have a dad who would send him to a shrink. After that we became pretty good friends, I guess. He would come to my house though, I never went to his. His dad was a pedo. 

I was sixteen when I started to grow out my hair. 

I think it was more an act of rebellion than anything else; My dad said I needed a haircut, that long hair was for girls. I never got the haircut, but I started wearing my hair in a high ponytail like the girls did. Fred said I looked like a fag, so I called him a fag and then he said ‘what if I was’. I told him then he’d totally suck Mike’s dick; Everyone knew that’s what Mike wanted. 

Fred said I was an idiot and we didn’t talk for a few weeks. I felt bad, but I didn’t want to apologize. It was just a stupid joke. Sometimes Fred was stupid like that...he just couldn’t take a joke. 

I was sixteen when I got my first job.

It was a sucky job at a gas station, but I needed money to fix the car and to go out with my friends sometimes. Of course, none of them really had any money either. When I was sixteen it just seemed like everybody needed the stuff; I wish we didn’t need money. Life would be about helping a brother out instead of paying Bills. 

My dad said that’s communist talk. I told him it was Marxist, actually. He wasn’t happy with that and I ended up having to cook dinner for the rest of the week even though he knows I can’t cook. We’re lucky we didn’t both just starve that week. 

Almost all the money I made went straight to the car; I’d really banged it up. I wanted to get it fixed because I missed being able to get around easily. 

When I was sixteen I went to a lot of parties. 

After the Halloween party there was a new party nearly every weekend, and sometimes even on school nights. I got messed up with Fred at most of them; People started to think we were junkies. We never did hard stuff though, just weed and beers. We weren’t party kids like people thought we were. We just went because we had nothing better to do. I think that’s why most of the kids went. 

Fred was arrested once for having pot on him in school; He was so high he didn’t really care. After that we were more careful; Neither of us could afford anything else on our records. We might not act like it, but we wanted futures…I wanted something more than a gas station existence. I think Fred just wanted to get out. 

I was sixteen when Fred was in a car crash that scared me half to death. He wasn’t even the one driving...It had been Mike (the one who wanted his dick sucked). Fred was doing him when they drove, just like in that scene in American Gods. I thought it was my fault...I’d given him a hard time. It was my fault.

Fred woke up from the coma on the second day, but Mike never did...he had been killed in the accident. 

After that things were different; I am seventeen now. Sixteen is a long time away, but I remember it all. It gets foggier every day, but I remember it. Sixteen was my biggest year yet, but now, now I am seventeen. Seventeen is bigger than sixteen and I know this will be bigger than sixteen. 

One year after the next. 

When I was sixteen...

**Author's Note:**

> Please review!


End file.
